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Romney digs in on refusal to release more tax returns as campaign drops gloves

 

WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney remained defiant Tuesday in the face of relentless pressure to release more of his tax returns, while his campaign dropped further hints that he would soon be unveiling the long-awaited identity of his running mate.

 

"The opposition research of the Obama campaign is looking for anything they can use to distract from the failure of the president to reignite our economy," Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee, said in an interview with the conservative National Review Online.

 

"I'm simply not enthusiastic about giving them hundreds or thousands of more pages to pick through, distort and lie about."

 

Earlier in the day, there was evidence the Romney campaign was heeding calls to fight back against Obama's damaging attacks on their candidate when surrogate John Sununu told reporters: "I wish this president would learn how to be an American."

 

Sununu, the former governor of New Hampshire, said Obama "has no idea how the American system functions."

 

"And we shouldn't be surprised about that, because he spent his early years in Hawaii smoking something, spent the next set of years in Indonesia, and when he came to the U.S. worked as a community organizer — which is a socialized structure — and then got into politics in Chicago."

 

The increasingly nasty barbs reflect a presidential race that's getting more brutal by the day, in particular since the Obama campaign began accusing Romney of hiding something by refusing to release more tax returns while assailing him about the true length of his tenure at investment firm Bain Capital.

 

Even fellow conservatives — including his one-time rival for the Republican nomination, Ron Paul —have urged Romney to release more than two years of returns.

 

"Politically, I think that would help him," Paul, the libertarian congressman who's retiring later this year, told Politico.com.

 

"In the scheme of things politically, you know, it looks like releasing tax returns is what the people want."

 

Indeed, a Public Policy Polling survey has found more than 60 per cent of independent voters — a crucial bloc of the U.S. electorate, hotly sought after by both campaigns — wants Romney to release more of his tax returns.

 

Another poll suggests Obama's onslaught is starting to hurt Romney in key battleground states, although the two men are still neck and neck in national surveys.

 

In a swing-state poll from Purple Strategies, nearly four in 10 surveyed said new information about Romney last week made them consider him less favourably than they had before.

 

Forty-two per cent of independents said Romney was "too out of touch" to be president, while in Colorado, Virginia and Ohio, his favourability numbers were dropping.

 

But Fergus Cullen, the former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican party, urged fellow Republicans to chill out.

 

"I don't know why so many Republicans are complaining right now," he said. "Romney is holding Obama under 50 per cent in several competitive states. He's raising more money than Obama, and no one thought that would happen. This is a good campaign; it's not a campaign that's in trouble."

 

Team Romney, however, seems intent on creating distracting buzz about his vice-presidential pick. Word Tuesday that staff has already been hired to work with the candidate's running mate fuelled speculation an announcement was imminent.

 

Announcing a VP pick this week could serve dual purposes: It would not only deflate Obama's attacks against Romney, but would allow Romney's running mate to campaign stateside when the former Masschusetts governor travels abroad later this month.

 

And yet Romney's reported short list of candidates doesn't include many political firecrackers who would energize his campaign.

 

The list is apparently down to a final three: former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Ohio Sen. Rob Portman and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

 

The most notable absence is Marco Rubio, the Cuban-American U.S. senator from Florida who was thought to be a near shoo-in just a few weeks ago. Romney campaign insiders say the two men lack a personal connection, and that the pro-immigration Rubio could cost him votes among the far right of the party.

 

Cullen says his money's on Portman — a relatively unknown legislator from one of the most crucial swing states in the union. Portman's met with Team Romney several times in recent weeks.

 

But Romney's not going to rush a VP announcement just because of bad press this week, Cullen said.

 

"The VP pick is something you'll live with hopefully for eight-and-a-half years, so you're not going to do it just to try to get away from a few days of bad headlines," Cullen said in an interview.

 

Portman is considered a safe bet: he's got lots of experience as a congressman, senator, budget director and cabinet member, in addition to a picture-perfect family life. He poses a low risk to the ticket, something particularly attractive to the Republican establishment after John McCain's ill-fated pick of Sarah Palin as running mate four years ago.

 

On Tuesday, McCain vehemently denied having chosen Palin over Romney in 2008 because of the contents of the millionaire's tax returns — a remark that quickly went viral and may end up doing more harm than good.

 

"We thought that Sarah Palin was the better candidate," McCain told Politico.com.

 

"Why did we not take Pawlenty, why did we not take any of the 10 other people? Why didn't I? Because we had a better candidate, the same way with all the others. ... Come on, 'why?' That's a stupid question."

 

Steve Schmidt, McCain's top campaign adviser four years ago, says it was Romney's vast wealth, not the contents of his tax returns, that gave him pause.

 

"Sen. McCain got caught flat-footed answering a question about how many houses he owned," Schmidt told the Huffington Post.

 

"In fact, they were Cindy McCain's properties but that distinction was lost in the political optics and we knew it would be a big liability that the presidential and the vice presidential candidates together owned more than a dozen homes. It was like something out of a 'Saturday Night Live' skit."

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Mitt Romney release two years of tax returns and you guys are digging for more? That wouldn't change the dynamics of the positive campaign Mitt have run so far. Mitt worked hard for what he has earned and its all legal to make money. He paid more taxes than all of Obama yearly salary. Like yall nah ready for a new president?

FM
Originally Posted by ABIDHA:

Mitt Romney release two years of tax returns and you guys are digging for more? That wouldn't change the dynamics of the positive campaign Mitt have run so far. Mitt worked hard for what he has earned and its all legal to make money. He paid more taxes than all of Obama yearly salary. Like yall nah ready for a new president?

These socialists, what is yours in mine!

FM

With or without tax return release, pressure on Romney ramps up from both sides

 

By and ,

Tuesday, July 17, 6:45 PM--Source

 

The political pressure on Mitt Romney to release more of his personal income tax returns is causing some divisions inside the GOP presidential candidate’s camp, according to a Republican strategist close to the campaign. Although some advisers are arguing privately that Romney needs to release additional filings to curb the political fallout, others are resisting that suggestion, reflecting the candidate’s longtime reluctance to publicly disclose information about his personal finances.

 

Kevin Madden, a senior adviser to Romney, would not discuss internal debate about strategy but said said there is only one opinion that matters in the internal strategy debate.

 

“The final voice on this is the governor’s, and he’s made it very clear that the two years that he’s provided represent going above and beyond what’s required to be disclosed,” he said.

 

Asked about his taxes in a telephone interview Tuesday with National Review Online, Romney said: “The opposition research of the Obama campaign is looking for anything they can use to distract from the failure of the president to reignite our economy.”

 

He added: “And I’m simply not enthusiastic about giving them hundreds or thousands of more pages to pick through, distort and lie about.”

 

Late Tuesday, after the interview with Romney, the editors of the National Review wrote an editorial arguing that the only question for Romney is “whether he releases more returns now, or later — after playing more defense on the issue and sustaining more hits.”

 

The editorial joins a growing chorus of Romney allies who have been urging him to make the additional information public. In response to a reporter’s question at the State Capitol in Austin, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) also urged his former White House rival to be “as transparent as you can be,” although he appeared to stop short of calling on Romney to release more information.

 

The tax issue moved center stage Tuesday in a campaign that has grown more acrimonious by the day, and Romney maintained that he would not release more that just the past two years of tax returns because he does not want to give the Obama campaign ammunition to attack him.

 

One reason for Romney’s reluctance is his belief that he will not be able to provide enough information to satisfy his critics.

 

“It’ll never be enough,” Madden said. “If you release 10, they’ll want 20. If you release 20, they’ll want 25, and whatever’s in there will be open to their distortions and their dishonest attacks.” The campaign has pointed to the fact that GOP nominee John McCain released only two years of returns during the 2008 campaign; Democrats have countered that McCain was the only one of the past seven White House challengers to release just two years of documents.

 

Many Republicans say Romney’s refusal to release the tax returns is beginning to cost him politically. “Perception is becoming Romney’s reality, and these issues have now risen above mere distractions,” said GOP consultant John Weaver, a former senior adviser to McCain’s 2000 and 2008 bids. “The president has had the worst three months of any incumbent, due to the economy, since George H.W. Bush in 1992, and yet Romney has lost traction among key demographic groups in the vital swing states. He has got to get this behind him or he’s going to face summer definition a la [Bob] Dole and [John] Kerry.”

 

The Obama campaign on Tuesday began running a new tax-themed campaign ad in Pennsylvania and appears ready to continue pummeling Romney on the tax issue, with or without the release of his returns. The ad speculates that the former Massachusetts governor’s reluctance “makes you wonder if some years he paid any taxes at all.” Among the Republicans jumping into the tax fray this week have been Rep. Ron Paul (Tex.), who told Politico on Tuesday that he thinks Romney should release more of his returns

 

Fox News Channel’s Brit Hume weighed in on the matter Monday night, telling host Bill O’Reilly, “I don’t see any evidence that this is making a difference, but you know, anytime it’s disclosure versus non-disclosure, you always wonder whether it isn’t better to just put it out there.”

 

The two join Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R), former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour (R) and conservative commentators George F. Will and William Kristol in suggesting that the best move for Romney is to release the information.

 

The fight over Romney’s tax returns is part of a battle being waged by the candidates to control the turf on which the broader campaign is to play out.

 

For Obama, the goal is to focus on Romney’s private-sector background — a point on which the president hammered his GOP rival at a fundraiser Tuesday afternoon.

 

Romney’s “main calling card for wanting to be president is his private-sector experience, so we asked the voters to examine that experience,” Obama said at his first fundraiser of the day, at the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio, where he addressed a luncheon crowd of 1,200, including many Latino supporters.

 

At a rally in Pennsylvania, Romney seized on a remark Obama made during a campaign stop in Virginia last week to make his case that the president is ill-equipped to fix the country’s economy.

 

“He said this: ‘If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen,’” Romney told the 700-member crowd at Horizontal Wireline, referring to Obama. “That somebody else is government, in his view.”

 

Romney added that he thinks the president wants Americans to be “ashamed of success” and that Obama is “changing the nature of America.”

 

“I find it extraordinary that a philosophy of that nature would be spoken by a president of the United States,” Romney said.

 

But just as the messaging battle has ramped up, so, too, have some of the envelope-pushing attacks from both sides.

 

Last week, the Obama campaign released a hard-hitting ad that appeared to question Romney’s patriotism and featured footage of the candidate singing.

 

On Tuesday, former New Hampshire governor John Sununu (R), a top Romney surrogate, suggested in a conference call with reporters that Obama doesn’t understand how the U.S. economy works.

 

“I wish this president would learn how to be an American,” Sununu said.

 

He later offered a clarification: “What I thought I said, but what I didn’t say, is the president has to learn the American formula for creating business.”

 

David Nakamura in Texas, Nia-Malika Henderson in Pennsylvania and Chris Cillizza in Washington contributed to this report.

FM
 

  

The tax issue moved center stage Tuesday in a campaign that has grown more acrimonious by the day, and Romney maintained that he would not release more that just the past two years of tax returns because he does not want to give the Obama campaign ammunition to attack him.

 

I wonder what Romney means by this. I wonder if he is worried that folks like ABIDHA will realize that he made a ton in some of those years not by working hard but by laying off relatives and friends of folks like ABIDHA.

FM
Originally Posted by Demerara_Guy:

 

At a rally in Pennsylvania, Romney seized on a remark Obama made during a campaign stop in Virginia last week to make his case that the president is ill-equipped to fix the country’s economy.

 

“He said this: ‘If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen,”

Why is Romney surprised. He got his help from his father also. It is not like he is a Rockefeller or anything.

FM
Originally Posted by ksazma:
 

  

The tax issue moved center stage Tuesday in a campaign that has grown more acrimonious by the day, and Romney maintained that he would not release more that just the past two years of tax returns because he does not want to give the Obama campaign ammunition to attack him.

 

I wonder what Romney means by this. I wonder if he is worried that folks like ABIDHA will realize that he made a ton in some of those years not by working hard but by laying off relatives and friends of folks like ABIDHA.

Bull Crap, and you know it.  Romney was not a "green mailer".

FM

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